It was very, very late – so late it was early – and normally the little girl would have been asleep long before now. Well, in bed at least. But not tonight – tonight was a night that would leave its stain on her memory, and the memories of all involved. It was a night when her world as she know it would change, and one of the stabilizing pillars in her life would crumble and leave her ill-balanced and shaky for years yet to come.
But the little girl didn't know that – all she knew was that Papa and Sis had been fighting again. That in itself wasn't so rare – they had always had the occasional disagreement, and they had been getting more frequent when Sis had turned sixteen. Now, at nineteen, they were almost daily occurrences. No, what was special about this night was that they had argued the night into dawn, and had not even tried to keep their voices down, but had screamed at each other nonstop from the moment the heavy oaken doors of father's study slammed shut. Of course, the door and the walls were thick enough that their words were lost and all that passed through were voices and tones, but still, it normally concealed their fights from the rest of the household. Suddenly, there was a loud, sharp CRACK that broke through even the four-inch-thick walls and left behind it a silence that was twenty times as echoingly loud as the screaming had been.
Then the door burst open and the little girl's sister exited from the room, her left cheek a flaming red that denied the expression of carved ice on her face. Their father made as if to move towards the door, and the girls, his mouth opened to form the beginnings of words, but the little girl's sister slammed it shut before he could get any farther, not noticing or not caring that the portraits on the walls shook at the force of the slam. She stalked down the hallways, deaf to her little sister's inquiries, so the girl followed her, burning with the curiosity that is so abundant in all six-year olds.
She watched her sister stomp her way out of the mansion and to the grounds with an air that is normally only associated with very angry, very large cats. Servants fled from her path – or maybe from the expression on her face, which the little girl could not see from her position. Down they went, down and out of their father's extravagant house and into the English countryside; heedless of the dark only just beginning to fade in dawn, he sister walked past the many stone fountains, through the elegantly manicured Formal Gardens, and into the much less gardened area where the stables were, and the mews and the kennels. The little girl watched as her sister disappeared into the stables first, and emerged some time later, leading three horses on halter-ropes.
The first horse was very young, almost too young to wear a saddle, a blocky mustang with strong legs and a fiery red coat – a colt her sister had helped birth and was now training. The second was a sleek Arabian bay, and her sister's favorite hunter. The last horse was the largest of them all, topping the Arabian by a hand and the mustang by two. He was pure onyx black, and the stable hands swore he was three-quarters mad, but he stood at her sister's should as docile as an aging pony. The little girl wasn't surprised – her sister took to needlework like a cat took to water, Cook had banned her from the kitchen, and she saw etiquette lessons as a form of cruel and unusual torture, but she had a knack for making animals love her.
One by one she went to each of the horses, slipped off their halters and whispered a few words into their ears. Then, with a flick of a rope across their rumps, she set them free. They stayed where they were for a moment, before the big black shook his head with a snort as if trying to be rid of a pesky fly and sprang off like a shot, the other two behind him. Her sister watched them until the trees had hidden all trace of their passing with an expression the little girl had never seen before, and could not name, and then she turned into the kennels.
The dogs ran straight out of the kennel without needing her encouragement, five big mastiff/something hybrids (and more than a few willing to replace the "something" with "wolf"), and the little girl watched her sister go into the mews, not understanding her older sibling's behavior, but appreciating that this was something that needed to be done, and done in silence.
When her sister left the mews, she had only one bird on her ungloved fist, a two year-old peregrine falcon tiercel that was death on wings to small animals, birds, falconers, trainers, and basically anything and anyone not her sister. She held the bird, named Freiheit, close to her chest, her free hand buried in his breast feathers, her head bent down over his in a pose that was certain death if anyone else tried it. They stayed like that for a long time, until dawn was no longer a promise on the horizon, but well under way. She whispered a few words to the falcon, then launched him into the air and stared until Freiheit was only a shrinking dark spot in the sky, and then not even that. Now, the little girl decided, now was the time for words.
"Kate?" She queried, "Wa's going on? Why'd'ja do that?"
At this, she saw her sister's shoulders sag, her head bow down and her hands fall to hang limply at her sides; and just when she thought her sister would break, would crumple up into a ball and cry for the first time she had ever seen, Kate's back straightened, her shoulders squared, and her hands curled into fists. When she turned around, Kate's mouth was thin, and her eyes were strained and slightly watery – but the worshipful eyes of the little girl refused to see, just as she did not even consider that her older sister had any reason other than a good and just one for doing what she did.
"Nothing," Kate replied with a smile to sad and bitter to belong to her, and so didn't. "I'm just going to have to go away for awhile, Lizzie, and I thought I'd let my friends go on vacation will I'm gone." Her eyes clouded and Kate looked at her little sister without seeing her for some time before rapidly shaking her head – much like the black stallion had done.
"Can you promise me something Lizzie?" she asked, crouching down to look her sister in the eye. Lizzie nodded mutely, and was rewarded by a glowing smile from Kate, a smile that didn't completely reach her eyes – but again, Lizzie's brain corrected what her eyes could not possibly have seen.
"I need you to promise that whatever happens, you won't forget me." Kate's eyes burned far out of proprtion to their steel-gray color, stilling Lizzie's immediate reaction to agree thoughtlessly, and leading her to again settle for a solem, unmistakeable nod. Then, because no matter how mature she had been acting for the past few hours, she was still only six years old, Lizzie added a plainative almost-whine.
"My feet 'r hurtin', Kate. 'M tired."
Kate grinned (this one finally reaching her eyes) an picked up her little sister in a sweepng hug.
"Then we'd better get to sleep, hadn't we Little Larkie Lizzie, hmm?" Kate teased, using the nickname that never failed to casue her little sister to dissolve into giggles - and this time was no exception. They started off back to the mansion, Kate walking and Lizzie being carried, the ruby dawn lighting the way, and Lizzie was just drifting off to sleep when she heard Kate whisper something she wasn't sure she was supposed to have heard.
"Don't worry, Elizabeth, everything will be alright. I promise."
She didn't know then that those would be the last words her sister would ever speak to her for a very long time, didn't know that neither of them would have a chance to say good bye. Elizabeth Swann fell asleep in complete ignorance of the fact that her sister, her acting-mother, her truest and best friend in the whole world, her pillar, her rock would be gone when she woke up.